The Key to the Father’s Treasure

I wrote in my first entry, Introduction, that prayer had become an unhinged experience for me until I began working through the Lord’s Prayer. I never really thought much about the Lord’s Prayer as a model and I always shunned formulas and structure for prayer, but lately, I’ve been questioning the assumption that God just wants us to say anything when we pray. What I mean is if you study the specificity of God’s design for his tabernacle and temple in the Old Testament, then add to that the specificity he gave the Israelites regarding how they were to present their offerings and sacrifices, and then realize that he designated an entire tribe, the Levites, as THE people to perform all the functions properly, it seems that the only conclusion you can draw is that God demands that we come to him on his terms, not our own.

But that conclusion doesn’t seem to fit solely in the Old Testament. Jesus said, “not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.” It seems that approaching God, even in the New Testament times must be on his terms and not ours.

There are many prayers in the Bible that we can imitate, but we should probably pay extra special attention when Jesus says, “When you pray, pray like this…” Most of the time, the Lord’s Prayer is just a song for solemn church services or a prayer used by the Catholic Church. But we need to rethink this. The Lord’s Prayer is given to anyone who calls themselves as one of Jesus’s disciples. If you are a follower of Christ, then the Lord’s Prayer is for you. It’s that simple.

But Jesus didn’t just give us the Lord’s prayer in isolation, he provided it in the context of the Sermon on the Mount. Furthermore, as I’ve attempted to point out, I think it likely that the Lord’s Prayer is not merely a piece of the Sermon on the Mount; but the Lord’s Prayer is a series of keys unlocking and opening the treasure chest that we call the Sermon on the Mount. And the treasure of the Sermon on the Mount gives meaning and purpose to the key of the Lord’s Prayer.

The first key in the Lord’s Prayer is the phrase, Our Father in Heaven hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come (on earth as it is in heaven). The coming kingdom of the Father is populated with those people spoken of in the beatitudes. The heart of God cries for the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, those who hunger for righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, and the peacemaker; these are the citizens of the Father’s coming kingdom. And when we pray that his kingdom comes we must ask ourselves if we would be counted as part of that kingdom. We must also ask if we have been active in aiding others who are part of the Father’s kingdom. Only those who are part of the Father’s kingdom will be called children of God, not those outside the kingdom. God’s children are the salt and light of the world. We must ask if we are God’s salt and light.

The second key in the Lord’s Prayer is the phrase Your will be done (on earth as it is in heaven). The riches unlocked in the Sermon on the Mount describe a WILL-lived life. Not a willful life, but a life spent following the will of the Father. But I don’t mean that you are doing the things (career, spouse, financial decisions) that you think God wants, though those are important, I mean that you are obeying him in how he has asked us to live. Do you lust? Are you angry with your brother? Do you seek vengeance? Do you say one thing but do another? Do you love those who are easy to love and hate others, or do you love everyone? Do you give to the needy? Do you pray? Do you fast? The will of the Father on earth is that we act as children of God, just as Jesus did. To do this, we must study the life of Jesus, the word of God, and pray for the Spirit’s guidance. That is what is meant when we pray, “Your will be done.”

The third key is the phrase, Give us this day our daily bread. I’ve watched a few videos on Youtube. In particular, the videos of really cool cars going really fast. These videos almost always lead to another set of videos of rich people and their car collections. And those videos inevitably lead me to think if-I-had-a-billion-dollars-I-would… If I’m lucky, my spiritual mind will take over and remind me about the many people on earth who don’t have enough money for their daily bread, let alone for a Bugatti. For some reason, I don’t think the treasure unlocked by Give us this day our daily bread has anything to do with expensive cars or extravagant lifestyles. The first part of the treasure is the acknowledgment that the Father alone feeds us; secondly, we should be thankful for what we have. But there is a third treasure that we must not miss; we are called to be the Father’s hands here on earth. We are, for many people, the Father’s means of providing them their daily bread. Furthermore, our focus should shift from worries about how our needs will be met to seeking out the things of God and his kingdom. Instead of longing for temporal baubles, we should seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness when we pray, Give us this day our daily bread.

The next key has to do with forgiveness, and is, I think, one of the most difficult passages of the Lord’s Prayer. The keyword in the phrase Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors is the word “as.” God’s forgiveness of our sins is linked to the way in which we forgive others. We are told, essentially, that since God has forgiven us of our sins, who are we to withhold forgiveness from others? Jesus says, “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” Theological maneuvering excepted, this seems pretty simple; forgive others or God won’t forgive you. I realize that sounds pretty harsh, but maybe it will help you a bit if you think of it this way; we are the conduits through which God’s forgiveness is supplied to others. But if we won’t pass God’s forgiveness on to others, then God’s cleansing water of forgiveness becomes stagnant within us; it is of no use to others and it does us no good.

Another key is the phrase, lead us not into temptation. Certainly, we don’t want any member of the Trinity leading us into temptation, but how often do we boldly go where no man should go? To pray that God would not lead us into temptation doesn’t exclude us from doing our part to avoid places filled with temptation. We must walk through the narrow gate, not a wide one. Have you ever thought about what a narrow gate has that a wide one doesn’t? A narrow gate has restrictions, limitations, signs that tell us to stay on the road. Walking through the narrow gate means that even though we may cry “Freedom in Christ” our freedom doesn’t lead us into places where Christ would not go. Our freedom also doesn’t do damage to others. True treasure is not found along the broad way leading to destruction, it is found on the hard narrow road that leads to life.

The phrase Deliver us from evil unlocks the treasure of truth and obedience. There have been many people who have said or done great things for God but who, themselves, were not changed by God’s Word; we should not follow those people and we certainly should not become one. Praying for deliverance from evil is to pray that we are kept from a life of duplicity; as a result, we will be welcomed into the Father’s presence as a long-lost child, not kicked to the curb because “he never knew you.”

The last key, For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever, unlocks the greatest treasure of them all. The Father’s kingdom is the only kingdom that reigns forever. His is the only eternal power. His is the only undiminished glory.
Why are we blessed when we are persecuted?
Why do we live moral lives?
Why do we give? Fast? Pray?
Why do we seek righteousness instead of Bugattis?
Why do we forgive others?
Why do we avoid temptations?
Why do we walk the hard and narrow path?
Why do we live a life of truth and obedience?
We do all of these things because doing otherwise would be to live in a sandcastle awaiting certain destruction.

The Lord’s Prayer unlocks the treasures found in the Sermon on the Mount, but it also does one other thing; it provides a way for us to talk to and listen to the Father. The Lord’s Prayer is a conversation, not a monologue. We speak—we pray—and then listen to the living word of God as the Spirit convicts us, instructs us, and prepares us to be citizens of the Father’s kingdom. We pray in this way because we are sons and daughters of God, brothers and sisters of Jesus, and we need to talk to our Father; we need to listen to him. There are certainly other reasons to pray, but none of them are as important as connecting with our Heavenly Father.

Read the Next Post: The Lord’s Prayer and Psalm 145